The Ivy Building for the Arts is located at 2637 27th Ave. S., in Minneapolis.

COST: Suggested $10 donation will go directly to the owner of the space, as she has graciously gifted it to us for the event. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, however.

WHO SHOULD COME: Community members, friends and family, anyone interested in reading and/or supporting voices and writing of women of color academics.

Shannon Gibney has curated a reading, panel, and open mic on women of color academics writing creatively about our experiences.

Gibney has asked Ana M. Perez, Taiyon Coleman, and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, all local women of color academics, to read about 10 minutes of their work, to be followed by a panel discussion. The conclusion of the event will be an open mic, in which any and all women of color academics who have something to share will be encouraged to do so.

Please make time to attend this vital discussion!

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples’ Literature. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, her next novel, Dream Country, is about more than five generations of an African descended family, crisscrossing the Atlantic both voluntarily and involuntarily (Dutton, 2018).

Ana M. Perez was born and raised in central Florida; she earned a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at Minnesota State, Mankato. Her research examines questions of race, color, and beauty among Mexican American women.

Although her first dream was to be a backup dancer for former hip-hop artist Heavy D, Taiyon J. Coleman is a writer, educator and consultant, and her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Currently completing her first novel, Chicago @ 15, she lives in Minneapolis with her family.

This activity is funded in part by a Minnesota State Arts Board Artists’ Initiative grant.